How MLB Is Rebuilding Baseball for the Creator Era

Play ball! In this Speak Easy session, Amar and Kaylee break down how Major League Baseball is reinventing itself for a new generation of fans. This is more than pitch clocks and rule changes. This is a masterclass in how legacy brands evolve by embracing creators, culture, and community.

We dive into MLB’s Creator Class, why bringing in non-traditional influencers is unlocking new audiences, and how fandom today extends far beyond the game itself. From partnerships with creators and media companies like Jomboy to platform integrations with TikTok and Adobe, MLB is building an ecosystem where fans don’t just watch, they create.

We also explore the shift in power between leagues and creators, why loosening control of IP can actually expand reach, and what this means for the future of sports, media, and storytelling.

Amar brings the perspective of a lifelong Mets fan watching the evolution in real time. Kaylee breaks down the strategy behind MLB’s creator-first approach. And the episode lands on a clear takeaway: when you trust creators to do what they do best, the upside is exponential. 

TIME CODES

00:00 Intro and Amar’s baseball season hype
 00:40 Baseball’s aging fan base problem
 01:50 How MLB started catching up to younger audiences
 03:10 Rule changes and modernizing the game
 04:40 MLB’s Creator Class explained
 07:20 Reaching younger and non-traditional fans
 09:00 Stadium culture, food, and experience as entry points
 10:40 Regional creators and local fan identity
 12:20 Why long-term creator partnerships work
 14:20 Jomboy Media and investing in fan-driven content
 16:50 The shift from control to collaboration
 19:30 Does money affect creator authenticity?
 21:30 MLB’s TikTok strategy and digital growth
 23:40 Players as creators and brand builders
 25:10 Global expansion and international audiences
 26:40 Savannah Bananas and redefining baseball entertainment
 28:20 Why sports don’t exist in a vacuum
 30:00 Final takeaway: trust creators and scale reach
 31:30 Outro

Official Show Description

Speak Easy with Amar Shah and Kaylee Chicoski is where storytelling meets strategy and fandom becomes community.

Hosted by Emmy-winning storyteller Amar Shah and Shorty Award-winning strategist Kaylee Chicoski, the show explores how fan engagement drives culture, connection, and business growth.

From Taylor Swift to the Super Bowl, each episode, produced by West Egg Ventures, dives into how brands, creators, and fans build lasting loyalty through emotion, authenticity, and shared story.

Our Mission
We help sports, lifestyle, and culture-driven brands grow through fan-first strategy, creator-led content, and cultural activations that turn engagement into loyalty.

Learn more at WestEggVentures.com

📩 info@westeggventures.com

🎥 YouTube: youtube.com/@WestEggVentures

💼 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/west-egg-ventures

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

When you allow creators and storytellers to do what they do, the result is gonna be exponential in an investment they need.

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Losing a little bit of control of your IP to gain all the control over how far your brand is able to reach is going to be huge. You're listening to Speakies from West Egg Ventures. I'm Amar. And I'm Kaylee. This is where we talk about how fandom, culture, and creativity come together.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

And how the best brands and storytellers turn fans into communities. The one, it's a two, it's a three. Take me out to the ball game. Alright, I was channeling my inner uh Harry Carey here, but I'm so excited. Baseball season is upon us. And as a New York Mets fan, spring is eternal. So I've got my hope right now until it crashes later on. But uh I'm excited about baseball season. You know, we we had an incredible WBC, we had an action-packed free agency, we had an epic World Series, and now the 2026 season is upon us. Haley, are you excited as I am?

SPEAKER_01 1:14

Probably not as excited as you are. I'm not like a traditional baseball fan. Um, just not growing up in a place where baseball was a focus. I never really got a team, became a fan, watched it. But I think from a strictly professional standpoint, it's very interesting all of the things that are happening around baseball right now. It's really fun to talk about, fun to think about. So I am a fan in that regard.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

Look, baseball always creates that American pastime, poetic Ken Burns vibe, right? But the thing is, most baseball fans are getting up there in age, right? It's the oldest fan base out there at the age of 57. Yeah. I'm not quite there yet, but you know what I love about our camaraderie is that we've got the best of like the old school and the best of the new school. And I think that's where baseball really is uh doing an incredible uh job, especially the MLB, in uh telling stories of the game, of expanding the brand.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

Yeah, absolutely. And I think there was a period of time, probably five-ish years ago, where the big question in fan engagement in sports and entertainment, especially on the industry side, was what is baseball going to do to attract younger fans, right? And I spent time at NASCAR, and that is also a pretty old fan base compared to a lot of mainstream sports. And so it was a lot of looking at case studies from other leagues that were doing really well in the space of attracting new fans. And baseball was one where we just didn't quite know where it was going. I think that when you had players coming up that were young and fiery and they had social presence and they were like driving conversation in the space, there was a period of time where I feel like the league wasn't quite matching the fan engagement needs that were there. And I feel like now they're finally catching up. I feel like now they are also setting precedence in a lot of the programming and partnerships and things that they're doing, which is really impressive. Um, but yeah, I mean, I think it's been one of the most fascinating kind of spins on where their focus is, where they're prioritizing effort and resources and budget and marketing. It's just been really fun to watch them grow in that space and kind of shift their focus, not away from their core fan base, but to really try to get more people into the sport.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

And I think it's super cool, right? Because, you know, from like the WBC, you see that there's a passion for the game throughout the world. And you've got that old school legacy part of baseball. And, you know, as you were saying, you know, the game has had to catch up, you know, to the audience that it now serves, right? The rules changes that have happened in baseball from a you know, from a playing perspective, all the way to the way the game is covered. You know, you've got pitch clocks, you've got the game is becoming faster, you no longer have these like three and a half, four-hour like epic slogs that unless you're like a diehard fan, you can't get through. Baseball has had to change not just again what happened on the field, but also what helped you know off the field and how it markets itself.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

Yeah, for sure. I think one of the best examples of this, and something I looked a lot at when we were at NASCAR and other leagues have tried to emulate this really uh, I don't know, innovative program. And it doesn't sound like it's anything extraordinary, but MLB in 2021 launched something called the creator class. Um, I would say most people in the industry didn't even really realize this was happening unless you were really tightly connected to the league itself. But for the general industry, it really went under the radar for probably the first two seasons of this program. And the idea here is to bring creators who are really not in the baseball space, right? Like they might be tangentially fans of baseball or fans of a team that they grew up watching, but generally they're bringing in like fashion creators and food creators and people who have surprisingly really large female audiences, but also just younger audiences that haven't had the touch point to baseball yet, to really let them do the heavy work of building that audience that isn't there, right? Like I think the hardest thing and the biggest thing that keeps sports and entertainment brands from really putting resources into new fans and getting more people into their brand is that it's really high turnover cost to actually get fans over, right? Like it's hard to convince somebody to tune into that many games every season, right? Not that they have to to be a fan, right? Like I think highlight culture is very big in younger sports audiences, but I think when a lot of sports leagues and teams and brands look at the cost versus the ROI on bringing new fans in, they're not quite seeing why it's worth the investment. I think this kind of program really eliminates that upfront cost, that those upfront resources that you might feel like you're wasting if you're trying to just go out and cold outreach to these audiences that you don't have any touch points with. So I think the creator class has been one of the most successful influencer-based programs that I've seen in sports and entertainment, but it's just grown like year after year. It's so interesting to watch this evolve, see who they're choosing to be in the class every year and see kind of what those metrics look like at the end of each season. So it's been a really fun program to watch grow, but I know that it's on the radar for a ton of sports and entertainment brands on how do they take what MLB has done and then make it work for their own branding and strategies. And that's also been an interesting thing to observe from the outside.

SPEAKER_00 6:47

No, and it's it's it's incredible because there's so many layers of the game that are of intrigue to people that not necessarily are baseball fans. Think about stadium food, right? There's an entire ecosystem of what a particular stadium is serving. You know, what is their great new sandwich? What is this epic dessert that they have to try? You know, what are the, you know, what are the access points that they have to enjoying the experience? So it's it's it's about the experiential, it's about the experience itself. Um, and all of those aspects of the game haven't been covered, you know, years before. But I think with all of these different audiences, especially with Gen Z and Gen Alpha, they want to consume, you know, aspects of the game that may not actually happen on the field itself.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

Yeah. Yeah, totally. I also think it's so interesting because we won't dive into the full broadcast strategy of baseball over, you know, the course of the last however many decades. But I think it's just interesting that there was such a regional, and there still is a pretty big regional push in baseball when it comes to broadcasts and how things are covered and how things are marketed uh in the sport itself. And I like that they've also incorporated regional specific creators into this program because I think that helps with that type of culture around the sport, the atmosphere. I feel like every team, every stadium, they have their own atmospheres, their own cultures, their own things that make each team and market unique and special. And I think when you bring in people who actually exist in that market and already target that market, right, as regional creators, again, you just get this advantage and this leg up in marketing to new fans, bringing in fans and executing a fan engagement strategy that you wouldn't otherwise have. And so I've really enjoyed that. And like you said, I think all of the aspects of the experience of baseball, not just what's happening on the field, is so important. And I think I think not only baseball, but I think a lot of sports are starting to see that that the experience of being there really has to beat all of these other things that could be distracting people, right? And all of these other things on social and digital, like you have to make people feel baseball, not just see it and see what's happening on the field. So I think this is one of those ways that that's really working and working well. And I think to do it, you lean into personalities that already resonate with fans.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

That's a really good point because, like, you know, back in the day, the way MLB would um try to um bring in a female fan base was they would tap into, I remember Alyssa Milano, the uh sitcom uh actress, uh, was a huge uh influencer back in like, you know, back in the day, uh being a Dodger fan, and she had her own um fate uh fashion line and baseball, and she was one of the early adopters. And now you have other examples with new age influencers too, right? On the fashion and dance side of things too.

SPEAKER_01 9:50

Yeah. Yeah, it's cool. It's also cool because I think the way that they outline the program is really interesting. Um, just the ability to access different events that you wouldn't otherwise access. I think, you know, reading through all of the partnership details, they get paid, obviously. So that's one big benefit of, you know, influencers, creators are always looking for some type of long-term partnership. I think we've talked about this before, but creator partnerships with brands, that's the future of it, right? That's where we are now in terms of what's successful. But those long-term brand partnerships that feel really genuine feel like there's something more than a transactional uh, you know, piece of content for a specific price. And I think that's what this is as well. And seeing them not only get paid so you have a guaranteed sponsorship deal, but you get access to so many things that I think the casual fan or someone engaging with the sport online in a way that was less official might not, right? Like they're bringing them out to content hubs during All Star Week. They've got MLBHQ, they're bringing them to the World Series, field access. And I think in a lot of ways, that is helping to build that experiential version of what MLB can be digitally. And so I don't know, it's just it's a very interesting concept. I enjoy seeing it. I enjoy like when they announce who the class is, but also the results are just speaking for themselves, right? Like at, you know, the end of 2022, I think they had 217 million TikTok views across the class. Coming into 2023, they had over 16 million followers combined. It's just targeting the right creators who have, again, this resonation with their followers that they already have that trust, that engagement, that they can just transfer over to something like baseball has just proven really successful, obviously. They're going on what, the fifth or sixth year of this program, and it just keeps growing and keeps getting more successful year after year. So I think it's something that we're gonna see a lot more of in the industry, and I'm excited for it.

SPEAKER_00 11:54

And what I love too is that, you know, baseball is also kind of creating its own babe Ruthian figures, right? I mean, look what Shohei Itani has done for the game, you know, and expanding it. And now he's become a pop culture figure. I mean, a couple of years ago, the best and you know, most popular player was a guy named Mike Trout, who people couldn't even name if he walked across the street. At least now with you know, Shohei Itani, he had expands that base that allows him to, you know, tap into those influencer circles too, and you know, conjoin those together. It optimizes both sides to create even more popularity, you know, for the sport itself. And you know, you mentioned, you know, the creator program, you know, MLB also has put you know their money where their mouth is when it comes to actually investing in these creators. I mean, look at what they did with uh John Boy Media, which is absolutely incredible. I mean, you know, I think John Boy was what founded in like 2018 by like these two guys who would do like these breakdown videos and put them on YouTube, and now they've expanded, they've created an entire ecosystem, and the MLB has actually invested money into you know this network, into this media business. So it's not just from a partnership standpoint, it's from it's also you know creating revenue opportunities for both sides of the aisle.

SPEAKER_01 13:19

Yeah, absolutely. I also think it's interesting as well, because a big point of contention, I think, with creators and media brands in specific sports and entertainment spaces, and we've seen this play out across a few examples that we won't dive into, but there are a lot of IP questions, right? A lot of this traditional way of thinking that anybody that's creating content about your specific brand, your IP, is a competition to you, right? As the broadcast, and that's like I said, that's traditional old school broadcast way of thinking that everything is competitive, everything is taking eyeballs away from the broadcast numbers, which we know affects partners and media deals and all of these things, right? But I think that now seeing a brand as big as MLB lean into like, yeah, we'll give you resources, we'll give you IP access, we'll give you things that you need to make content that resonates not only with your existing following, but the fans that we're trying to reach, because that just helps everybody. And I think media right now is in such a space where it's such an interconnected environment where you really need to have this like rising tides, raises all ships mentality of you need that cross-pollination. You need athletes going on other shows and podcasts, you need like Shohei Otani going on Pat McPhee. I don't know if that's happened, probably, but like you need those things to those wires to cross in order to grow, in order to establish those faces of brands, right? Because that's where media is headed and it's where people are finding success in media. And so I really respect MLB's decision, A, to be really open with their IP in these partnerships. And we'll talk more about that after. But I think also too to invest in different parts of the audiences, right? Like we talked about creator class, which is primarily for fans who don't watch baseball. But then the John Boy deal is specifically for fans who already watch baseball, right? Fans who are looking for a cultural community based on what they already experience and think and want someone who speaks like a fan, sounds like somebody in their group chat. And so they're really hitting a lot of different elements of fan engagement that are just so perfectly placed. And again, you're not gonna serve non-baseball influencers to core fans and vice versa. But I really love how they've pieced these partnerships together. And John Boy is a great example of that.

SPEAKER_00 15:41

It works, yeah, right? Sometimes you have these experiments where you try to throw two different things together and hope they synergize.

SPEAKER_01 15:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

And most of the time it sizzles out. Whereas I think the calculated bets that they've taken, you know, with this program have actually really created, you know, have leveraged them to really reap the benefits of you know, the reach of the audience that they have along with the audience of that creator themselves.

SPEAKER_01 16:15

Yeah, totally agree. I think it'll be interesting to see as well. Uh, I know a question that comes up a lot when we talk about these topics of partnerships and bringing independent creators, media, et cetera, into something like MLB. And we talked about how traditional that league has been in the past and how tightly held traditions sometimes create points of contention with new people coming in. So I think one of the questions that consistently gets asked is does the money coming from MLB affect the voice of those independent creators and media outlets and things that have developed on their own outside of kind of like the suit and tie eye of the league? And in my mind, I think it definitely can, right? And I think in a lot of cases you see that happen where leagues, brands, teams, whatever really take themselves far too seriously, apply a lot of restrictions on what people can and can't say. But I think in this case, specifically with John Boy, one, I having followed the rise of John Boy, I don't see them taking money in exchange for being told what narrative to push or what messaging to push, right? And I'm sure there's, you know, a few brand awareness things that they do in that partnership. And obviously you keep an eye on your partners in certain ways when you have those deals in place. But I think it takes the right partners on both sides, on the league side, to let go of that control a little bit and figure out what works and let the experts run their ship, right? Like I think that John Boy is arguably, not even arguably, right? Just like for a fact, objectively, an expert in the space of baseball fandom. And so when you think about them being the experts, I think MLB has taken their hands off the reins a little bit in that way. And I think John Boy, again, in turn, yeah, is just at a point where they have such an established brand that they don't, this sounds crazy. I don't think they needed MLB, right? Like it's a great partnership for them. It helps build their credibility as a brand, it helps get them in front of more people. But if it wasn't the right deal, they wouldn't have to take it.

SPEAKER_00 18:19

Well, and I think what you said right then is like they these content creators don't necessarily need the entity of which they are covering or they are providing feedback for or content from. Because, you know, if you think about it, that's the beautiful thing about this new creator economy, is that they can leverage their own audience, their own creativity, yeah, their own fandom, and without having you know that particular league or company or establishment having any opinion whatsoever. The great thing now is that the other side, you know, as someone, as someone who worked, you know, you worked at NASCAR, I worked at NFL Network, right? So we know um it's an interesting blend to see the creativity versus the corporate line that you have to balance. But surprisingly, there's a lot more autonomy than there was years ago because people see the opportunities that are available for letting people simply be themselves.

SPEAKER_01 19:21

Yeah, for sure. And I think when you work inside of those brands and you see those come to life, I think they're it is so it's so clear. It's plain as day what works and what doesn't. And at the end of the day, you have to have the mentality that those people and creators have built up what they built up because they know how to talk to their audience, and you have to let them run with it, right? And I think that's where we're gonna see the most success. And sports and entertainment generally lags a little bit behind in terms of keeping up with trends and getting into things. And I think it feels very innovative when it happens because sports and entertainment are so front of mind for a lot of people, especially in the US. But I think when you look industry-wise and you look outside of sports and entertainment, they're always a few years behind when it comes to like getting, you know, up on the latest thing. And I think the creator economy is no different, right? Like there was a lot of initial partnerships that came through that were very transactional, very structured, very you say this and do this, and those things didn't work, right? So now this is where we get these more new age partnerships. And I think the rise of independent media companies and sports and entertainment is also certainly helpful for that. But I think it'll be really interesting to watch. I think another kind of set of things that we've seen announced recently is they've made a few partnership announcements. They've also made some platform announcements, right? So MLB is gonna put one, a lot of money into TikTok, which is kind of interesting because I TikTok's obviously not new. I think this is the kind of announcement you would have heard maybe from a league two or three years ago, but theirs is a little bit different. So it's very interesting to break that down. Um, and then Adobe. So kind of jumping into the TikTok side, they have not a partnership, but what they're referring to as a structural integration with MLB. So in 2025, they grew 60% across the platform on TikTok, and now basically TikTok is integrating a formal dedicated MLB hub into the platform. Amazing. And it's incredible. And then this also ties into that creator element where not only creators in the creator class, but TikTok creators more broadly, right, are gonna get access to current and archival footage, which is huge.

SPEAKER_00 21:45

And it's awesome too that they're actually teaching the players how to use TikTok so they themselves become content creators along with the influencers and separate content creators themselves.

SPEAKER_01 21:56

100%. It's creators and players. In your space are your best brand advocates. And so I love this. I think the footage allowing access to footage in any sort of way again goes back into that conversation of just it's always very contentious with IP and what gets used and what's competitive and what's not. But like this is so cool. And it's going to set a precedent that I think is going to change creator engagement. It's going to change digital strategy across a lot of leagues, but that's really cool. And yeah, the TikTok lounge at the MLB player house. So the getting like any current player to just understand the importance of social and digital and branding themselves across social and digital and being an advocate for the league and the team is so important right now. And I think it's honestly necessary. And it's something that is going to separate leagues that continue to expand and become powerhouses in the future and ones that won't, right? Like I think we're in an age right now, and this might sound dramatic, but I do think we're in an age where, you know, the big five might not be the big five sports leagues in five years, 10 years, right? Just because digital, social, and the way people consume sports is so different. So I think if you don't take advantage of these things, you're really missing out. And it starts with not only the league, but the athletes themselves. So I really love that. I also love that they have international accounts that are specific to some of their biggest international markets.

SPEAKER_00 23:26

Smart play.

SPEAKER_01 23:27

It's it's honestly a masterclass. I I love this announcement.

SPEAKER_00 23:30

Because I think what caters to one, you know, country's demographic is gonna be very different than what caters to another demographic, but it allows that, you know, that particular group to really invest, you know, whether a player is from Venezuela or Puerto Rico or you know, whether they're from Japan, you know, it just allows them and it also gives fans a global perspective of how big the game is and how much it resonates, you know, with certain fans. You know, going back to what you were saying about you know the player-centric content, I mean, it's a byproduct of the new age that we're in right now, with you know, players getting going directly to their audience, being able to control their narrative. Whether it's like you know podcasts like All the Smoke, or whether it's you know, LeBron's show where he's directly or they're talking to you, players now have a new platform to be able to express their personalities or new aspects of the games, etc. And that gives you the opportunity to kind of get to know them on another level. I mean, think about you know, one one game changer I think is that baseball is not just the MLB, right? Baseball is now kind of expanded globally, where like you have the Savannah Bananas who are, I think, have changed baseball in more than any other any other you know, service or form has in years. What Jesse Cole has built has changed the rules of the game, the fandom of the game, the community of the game, etc. And you know, and now MLBs, I I like the fact that they're embracing these different aspects. You're talking about the Adobe Partnership, yeah, it creates a full-fledged studio for content creators now.

SPEAKER_01 25:17

Yeah, it's really cool. It's it's so interesting too because I think this is a very different way we've seen Adobe partner with sports and entertainment brands, obviously on the back end and internal side with specific teams and production teams, creative teams internally. But I think the idea to have a fan-facing and creator-facing interface that gives people the ability to leverage official MLB designs. Like that's the thing I think most brands, big brands that fail at this, don't understand is that people are going to do it anyways, right? They're going to create the content anyways, they're going to pull the logos anyways, they're going to get all of the things that they're looking for to make whatever they're going to create with or without your help. So why not set them up for success and set your brand up to be shared broadly to increase the reach, to make sure that every single logo, player photo, footage, like make sure it's all in line with how you want to be perceived as a brand. I think that by giving away control, you're actually gaining so much control over how your brand's perceived globally. And it's so smart. I I love, I really love the Adobe partnership. I think just having like one thing they included as well was the AI-driven search results, which I think is obviously on top of a lot of brands' minds, but being able to leverage a partnership with a brand like Adobe to actually make sure that the content and the information MLB wants to surface in LLMs like Claude, Chat GPT, Chat GPT, whatever, it's coming up exactly how they want it to be, you know, perceived. And I think that's really interesting. It's really, again, it's getting ahead of the curve on things that other brands might not do for two years.

SPEAKER_00 27:01

Yeah, and I and I think, you know, that expands out to like not just the league, but to what the teams are doing, right? Like I've seen the, you know, the maturation of like, you know, being a Mets fan, right? And you know, seeing the Mets social ecosystem and what it's done over the last few years, whether it's like embracing the whole um, you know, McDonald's and Grimace thing where like, you know, they had Grimace in the stands and that became like a winning streak. They wrote that. They had, you know, the the broadcast, you know, would become this epic cinematic thing. Now they've got the documentary side of things that they're doing. They've got, you know, the production value. Like, like fans are getting served like incredible cinematic, quality, broadcast, like content that's so catered for their personal fandom, yeah, that it, you know, it it's it's a it's a boon for the entire industry. And I think you know, that just kind of expands um the reach because you might not be a Mets fan, but you see how well this thing is done, you're gonna be one of part of it. And I think too, when you're talking about the creator economy, you got travel, hospitality, food, you've got all these different genres that have some tie-in with that particular sport that gives non-fans a way to enter the game and enjoy it and get interested in it.

SPEAKER_01 28:25

Yeah, I love that because I think there's so many ways to experience sport, and sport does not exist in a vacuum anymore, right? I think we used to believe it did. Uh, sports and entertainment brands will often say when you work with them or work in them, like, well, we're unique because we're sports, or we're unique because we're this. You're not, right? You don't exist in a vacuum. All of these things have touch points to other elements of culture, whether it's style or music or food or travel. And you have to tie into them. And the best way to do that, again, is creators or athletes, because they're real people going and doing things, right? Like they don't exist in a bat in a vacuum just the way your brand doesn't. And so, like you said, I love that the MLB has embraced that there's multiple ways to be an MLB fan, there's multiple ways to experience it, there's multiple ways to engage with it, and they're giving you touch points and entry points to do it in all different places.

SPEAKER_00 29:20

Yeah, and you know, and the MLB, like I said, they're they're embracing so many cultural, you know, offshoots of baseball in a way. You know, we talked about the Savannah Bananas and how big of an influence that they've had, you know, selling out stadiums and football stadiums, and then bringing that level of fandom where teams and the leagues are incorporating the ideas that they've established, testing them out in the minor leagues and incorporating them into the game. I mean, that's changing things. Like even on the YouTube level and youth sports, right? The the Potstown and all of these different like content creators, like these youth teams and these travel teams, and how they're like you get to know, like there are there are I mean, Savannah Banana players who have you know million plus YouTube channels or YouTube subscribers, um, and they're more well known than some of the biggest stars on some of these teams. That is incredible. I mean, baseball is expanding to South Asia, it's like um you know, expanding around the world. I mean, so the game, what I love about baseball, and as many people say baseball is dying, it's not dying. It's going through, it's constantly reincarnating itself for a new generation. And I think when something is has lasted as long as baseball has in the lore of American culture, it becomes sort of perennial, right? And that's where I think you know, we're at a really great opportunity to where all the new things that are going on in the new economy, along with this like old traditional thing, are kind of twine intertwining together in a way that's almost musical.

SPEAKER_01 30:57

Yeah. Yeah. And I I think the faster brands lean into that, the better off they're gonna be in the coming years. And so I love to see it for MLB. And yeah, like you're only failing if you're comparing broadcast numbers, right? And to be fair, most broadcast numbers across sports and entertainment are not necessarily down, but I think it's something where people look at traditional metrics in the world of a non-traditional media ecosystem and call it failure when really, again, you're investing in the future of the sport. And so I don't know. I think it's a really, it's a it's a fun case study to dive into. It's been fun to to research and look at all of the things. Honestly, like some of the success metrics that they've had from these partnerships and these programs were really surprising even to me as someone who's followed along with them. But what is kind of your like one takeaway for brands around this topic that they can glean from what MLB has done successfully?

SPEAKER_00 31:54

I think for me, when you allow creators and storytellers to do what they do, the result is gonna be exponential and an investment that you've made.

SPEAKER_01 32:07

Wow. Repost. I agree with that. Um, I also think losing a little bit of control of your IP to gain all the control over how far your brand is able to reach is going to be huge. Um I think those are probably the two key takeaways. Yeah, I'll root for them for you.

SPEAKER_00 32:31

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